A Model Affair
by
Lexington Manheim
Copyright © 2017 Lexington Manheim. All rights reserved.
Published by Scarlet Maiden, a trademark.
This is a copyrighted work. The scanning, uploading, copying, and/or distribution of this story without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property and a violation of copyright law. No part of this story may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without the express written permission of the publisher. This prohibition does not extend to a reviewer who may quote brief passages as part of a review.
This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A MODEL AFFAIR
by
Lexington Manheim
“Wear shoes you can walk in, something sturdy. We’ll be hiking over some rocky ground, and you’re gonna wanna protect your feet.”
It was so like Isaac to say something like that. He was always looking out for me, making sure I didn’t show up for a photo shoot unsuspecting of what it would involve. If he was going to have me traipsing through rough terrain, he always gave me fair warning.
“I’ve got a pair of Merrells,” I said into the phone. “They’ve got pretty thick soles. Will that be okay?”
“Long as you can get up and down hills in ‘em.” His voice was businesslike but tinged with just enough genuine concern for my wellbeing that it reinforced in me why I liked modeling for this man.
Some other photographers couldn’t care less about the model’s comfort. They’d drag her over stony cliffs, through ice cold rivers, or into thorny brush for outdoor shoots, and never once did they bother to ask if the girl before their camera lens had any issues about where she was posed. Not so with Isaac. Before the day of the shoot, he’d explain the scenario on the phone and ask me if there was anything that I was uncomfortable about. I never was. His explanations were always so detailed that I trusted he had already worked out any problematic elements. Still, I appreciated the courtesy of his asking.
I don’t know why I bothered to ask him if my Merrills would be okay. Of course they would, at least as far as Isaac was concerned. Anything I wore to the shoot would be jettisoned once we reached his chosen site. I’d be completely nude, and that would include footwear. He never had me model with shoes on.
“This is art, not porn,” I heard him explain once to his assistant Barbara who had asked if she should bring me my shoes as he posed me straddling a bicycle naked along a deserted country road, my bare feet pressed into the steel pedals.
He was right. Pictures of women wearing nothing but a pair of shoes are something you see in the nudie mags, not on the walls of museums or galleries. I’ve never been sure why that’s even a thing. Is that some sort of male fetish? Do guys fantasize about a girl getting dressed to go out by putting on a pair of six-inch heels and not a stitch else? Whatever that’s about, it wasn’t what we were doing. When Isaac’s camera started clicking, I’d be nude from head to toe. And there’d be no shots in which there’d that wouldn’t be abundantly evident. No matter how he asked me to pose, every photo included my whole body. Admittedly, that was odd. Most photographers will mix it up with the occasional close up or, at the very least, a shot that includes only face and torso. But I never once saw a photo from any of our shoots that didn’t have every inch of me in it. I asked him about that once, just out of curiosity.
“Beauty such as yours,” he said with a learned tone, “shouldn’t be permitted to have any part of it venture out of frame.”
It was such a purely Isaac comment. Coming out of anyone else’s mouth, it would have had the tinny ring of a corny line. However, hearing it spoken with such gentlemanly aplomb, it sounded genuine. He wasn’t just a photographer. He was an inspiration. My inspiration. He made me want to be beautiful for him. And somehow the photos he took of me always turned out better, always more alluring, always more sensuous than those taken by any other. How could I not love posing for such a man?
Maybe his age had something to do with my trust of him. He was older than most of the other photographers I posed for. He was at least in his late forties, maybe his fifties. Perhaps even his early sixties. It was difficult to tell. I knew he had been twice married and twice divorced and had no children. But, other than that, I had little knowledge of his personal history. Still, he had worldly maturity that echoed of a personal past seasoned with decades of experience. Salt-and-pepper hair and a grayish goatee added to the aura of agedness. Yet there was exuberance in the way he moved, a youthful sparkle of a boy playing with a new toy each time he picked up a camera. While I’d hold a pose, he’d scamper up rocks and over fallen tree trunks getting into position for just the right shot. Never did he seem to tire. Never would he allow any terrain, no matter how treacherous, to prevent his entry. He infiltrated places that even a person my age might have thought twice about.
I was twenty-eight on that day we discussed appropriate footwear. I’d already been posing for Isaac on and off for four years. He’d call whenever he needed a girl for a nude outdoors photo shoot.
“Jenny, are you willing and available?” was the usual way he’d ask after explaining the basic requirements.
I was always willing. Not every figure model is. A lot of models will do nudity only so long as it’s in a safe, indoors environment. Not that anyone I knew could recall an instance where a model encountered some tragedy while posing sans clothing in the great outdoors, but for many there’s still something disconcerting about being so exposed out in the open. And then, of course, there’s the possibility of being spied by unsuspecting passersby. It might seem weird for a nude model all of a sudden to sprout a sense of modesty about her body, but more than a few admit they’re embarrassed to be seen by anyone other than those who are “in the business.”
I, myself, got over that pretty early on. It happened while I was still in college, picking up some cash by modeling. My freshman year, I began posing for art classes on campus. Easy money but too few opportunities. So I listed myself on a modeling website as available for paying gigs. If you’re willing to take your clothes off, and you’ve got a slender physique with a nice pair of boobs, the jobs will come. And so they did for me.
On one such shoot, a female photographer had me pose naked on the rocks of a lake. It was off the beaten path, as they say, so we had the location to ourselves. That is until a small boat with an outboard motor came out of nowhere with two fishermen aboard. I heard the sound of the putt-putt engine and turned to see a pair of open-mouthed faces staring straight at me. The photographer was busy changing lenses and displayed no concern over the arrival of the boatmen. But as for me—well, it was the first time I was on nude display in public. I wasn’t sure what to do. Cover up? Ignore them? Pretend not to notice? It was too late for any of that. All any of that could do was make the situation even more uncomfortable for me. So I made a conscious, quickly reasoned choice. Either you’re OK with people seeing you naked or you’re not. I had already made that decision when I first started modeling. So what difference did it make whether these men saw me in a photo or in the flesh? I concluded it made none at all. And just to prove the point to myself, I angled my body directly toward them, beamed a toothy smile, and spread my legs wide to give them a good long look at my clean shaven pussy. The fishermen smiled back and waved politely. They appeared to be so grateful, that it made me glad I’d done it. I never worried about passersby again.
“I’ll pick you up at the usual spot about seven,” Isaac gave as his f
inal instruction before we said goodbye and hung up. “Seven” meant 7:00 a.m. Nude outdoor photo shoots were less complicated in the early morning hours. It was going to be on a Wednesday, and most of the population at that hour would either be groggily getting ready for work or, if unemployed, still sound asleep. That meant fewer people about to get in the way. We weren’t doing anything illegal, so it wasn’t a matter of getting caught. It was just easier to work without a crowd of curious looky-loos with a thousand questions.
This shoot would take place along a small creek that trickled through the outskirts of the city. There was a nice park there, but the place we were going was beyond the park’s limits, where the train trestles crossed the bubbling waters on their way toward downtown. I was familiar with the general area but had never ventured to the particular site Isaac described. Posing there would be a first for me.
It was a warm August morning when his car pulled up to the corner outside my apartment building where I was waiting. Isaac apologized for running a little late. Part of the reason was because he didn’t have his “Girl Friday” Barbara to help him that day.
Barbara had always come along on every shoot. I wasn’t sure exactly why. She didn’t seem to do a whole lot other than occasionally hold a reflector to cast extra sunlight on me. Isaac had metal stands that could do the same. Based on my knowledge of the photographer’s overabundance of courtesy, I guessed Barbara’s principal function was simply to make the models feel safer by having another female on the scene. I was certainly beyond the stage of needing that reassurance. I’d done enough shoots with the man to trust him implicitly.
However, all that week his assistant was attending to some family business and couldn’t come with us. Isaac told me this over the phone and said he’d understand if I preferred not to do the shoot without her. I said shit no—or words to that effect.
He jumped out of the car and opened the passenger door for me. I climbed in and felt the radiating warmth of the sun-baked seat on my ass and thighs. Because of the summer heat, and the need to be able to undress and redress quickly, I was wearing just shorts with a very abbreviated panty underneath and a cotton button down blouse. On shoots, I always wore a shirt that could be removed without having to pull it over my head. I didn’t want my shirt to muss up my hair, not after all the time I spent curling my chestnut colored locks into what I considered to be an enticing, enigmatic do.
Isaac, a tall, slender man, wore his usual jeans and a shirt with the sleeves rolled up above his elbows. No matter how hot, he always wore long sleeves so that his arms would be protected if he had to hack his way through brush or trees to set up a shot. Anytime I’d see him start to roll down those sleeves, I knew what was coming next. It meant I could take a short breather while he trekked with his camera into nature’s more inhospitable vantage points.
We chatted, as we always did, on the way to the shoot location. He’d ask me about my work. Not my modeling work, but the retail job I had in the mall that supplemented my income and occasionally provided a humorous anecdote based on the kooky antics of customers. The stories seemed to amuse him.
“What have you been working on lately?” I asked.
“Not much,” he said with a quiet tone.
That surprised me. It had been close to three months since I’d last posed for him. I’d have expected he would have been involved in several photography projects since them.
“That doesn’t sound like you,” I said. “What did you do—take a long vacation?”
He hesitated a moment. “No. I…had some health things to deal with.”
I wasn’t expecting that answer. Even more, the tone with which he said it gave me pause.
“Serious?”
“Well,” he hedged, “anything to do with your health is always something you should take seriously.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“It’s nothing contagious. You don’t have to worry about that.”
“But it is something serious?”
“Well,” he exhaled, “leukemia’s serious.”
My jaw dropped almost to my chest. Even though he kept his eyes on the road, I expected he could sense I was flabbergasted.
“But I’ve started chemo,” he continued. “Hoping for the best.”
I wanted to do something, to say something—anything that would make a positive difference. But what could I say or do?
“I hope you get better,” I said almost too casually for my own liking.
“Thanks,” he said.
We stopped talking until we reached the park. As expected, it was mostly deserted at that hour. I saw one mother pushing a child in a stroller. Other than that, we seemed to have it all to ourselves.
Isaac got out of the car, adjusted the seat forward and reached into the back seat to retrieve two large, durable cases that held his equipment. Usually, Barbara would carry one and he the other. However, since she wasn’t there, and I was toting only a light bag with a little makeup, a comb, a small mirror, and a compact canister of hairspray, I offered to carry on of his cases. He declined my offer, insisting he could carry both, and we set off through the park toward its southern perimeter where the creek flowed.
There was a small footbridge that crossed the water and led to either a park exit if you turned to the right or to a dirt path extending downhill toward the creek’s shore if you turned to the left. We went left, Isaac leading the way and cautioning me to be careful where I stepped as we negotiated the steep trail. At the base of the hill were scraggly trees and shrubs and, once we picked our way through them, an intermittently sandy and rocky shoreline.
The creek was narrow and, at its deepest, maybe only two feet. Its waters flowed without hurry in an erratic pattern that zigzagged about rock formations and sandy crests. Leafy trees provided an abundance of green on both sides. On the opposite shore, perhaps a hundred feet away and up an embankment, was a hiking path that played host to the occasional jogger or cyclist. Between the intermittent trees, I saw a young man running along its path. His gaze was focused on the trail directly before him, and he was wearing earphones. He seemed oblivious to our presence. I felt relatively certain we wouldn’t be bothered by any passersby. That is, if they even noticed we were there.
The August sun was already making its presence known in the form of the intense heat it radiated, and the humidity added a stickiness to the atmosphere. Isaac used the back of his hand to flick away beads of sweat accumulating on his eyelashes. I had hardly anything on, and I was feeling the effects of the temperature. He had the additional burden of carrying all the equipment. Again I offered to help carry some of it.
“No, no,” he insisted. “I don’t wanna risk you getting a bruise. Watch your step here.”
The creek branched into rivulets, one of which we now crossed by picking our way over various stones that peeked just above the surface. The fact is, the water here was probably no more than six inches deep, and we could have just waded through. But we both chose the drier method of crossing, maybe because it’s what you think you’re supposed to do when you see there are stepping stones. And once you cross them without getting your feet wet, there’s a sense of accomplishment. At least, that’s how I felt, silly though I know it is.
This was a farther hike than was typical of the shoots I did with Isaac. The scenery didn’t seem to change all that much as we walked, which gave me cause to wonder why we were pressing on. Things were just as picturesque behind the last bend as they were here. But I knew better than to question the photographer. He had someplace specific in mind for a particular reason, and that’s where we were going.
We rounded a tuft of trees and scrub brush, and there, straight before us, were four large concrete cylinders with round gaping mouths that had to be about twice my height, and I’m five feet four inches. They tunneled through an earthen embankment that angled upward another dozen feet toward what appeared to be crossing railroad tracks, the manmade passageways allowing the waters of the creek to pa
ss beneath to the other side. The massive size of the tubes struck me as implausibly overabundant. A ten-foot diameter pipe wasn’t necessary to accommodate the couple of inches of water that trickled through it—let alone four pipes of that size. I couldn’t imagine even the most torrential rainfall our area had ever known would cause a runoff flood that would necessitate cylinders of that size. Yet there they were. And, as soon as I saw them, I knew this had to be our shoot location.
“We’ll go to the other side,” said Isaac. “The sunlight’s better there.”
Of the four tunnels, the one that was second from the left carried the flow of most of the water, two accommodated lesser amounts that puddled up to the sides and dribbled through them, and the one to the extreme right was mostly dry. We entered the driest one, Isaac leading the way and stepping with caution on the curved surface that had not been designed for foot traffic. A layer of sediment rock coated the base of the pipe and, within the cylindrical enclosure, echoed a crunching sound with each of our footsteps. The only other sound I could make out was the photographer’s labored breathing.
“You okay, Isaac?”
“Fine.”
“You sure? You sound winded.”
“We’re almost there.”
As soon as we emerged from the other side, he put down the gear and sat himself on a large smooth rock. I stood nearby as he mopped his brow with a handkerchief. There was no sign of anyone else about, and the only sound was the babbling of the creek as it spilled out of the tubes and continued its way downstream. The sun was indeed better on this side of the embankment. It illuminated everything with bright, unshaded rays that sparkled on the water and made the concrete openings seem to pop out from the terrain they penetrated. It was an idyllic setting for a photo shoot. My only concern was for the man who was panting on the rock. He looked a bit gray. That is, grayer than usual.
“You probably shoulda let me help carry stuff,” I said.
“Maybe on the way back.”
He squatted down off the rock, reached into the flow, and splashed some water on his face.
“I’m better,” he said.
“You don’t look better.”
“Probably the chemo. At least, my hair hasn’t started coming out.”
Even though he had mentioned it earlier, this is where I first began to get a sense of the gravity of things. The man was sick. He had a blood cancer and was undergoing a therapy that was known to sap energy and cause side effects creating feelings of severe illness.
“Should